Voting In This Presidential Election Is Mortal SinThere Really Is NO Acceptable Candidate (For Catholics, At Least)

Politics is dirty business. Some would argue that it is impossible to engage in politics and remain morally just.1 While in some cases, there is a candidate that can merit the support of good people, this election presidential election is definitively NOTone of those cases.

I should note here that this argument is directed toward Catholics. That said, if you are not a Catholic, you still may benefit from the information and arguments here. I will also be limiting my analysis to candidates who are confirmed to be on the ballot in all fifty states.

The Catholic Church has taught us the fact that, if we provide material support for evil, we are morally complicit in that evil. Therefore, we are commanded not to vote for candidates who support objectively grave sin, since that would constitute mortal sin on our part, by willingly and knowingly committing grave sin. Let me repeat that for emphasis: Voting for a candidate who supports mortal sin is mortal sin. The kind of sin that precludes one from taking Communion, and if it is not repented of in Confession, damns one to Hell. Voting, especially voting for the options we as American citizens are stuck with, is serious, eternal business.

As for Gary Johnson, who has an unsurprising lack of support even among Libertarians, he too has spoken out in support of mortal sin. Not only is he decidedly pro-choice, but has also supported the forced violation of religious freedom, especially in the case of the so-called “Bake the Damn Cake” controversy.

So much for the simple and straightforward cases. Abortion is obviously an immediately disqualifying issue, but it is not the only kind of mortal sin, or even the only kind of murder which is made into a political issue. To quote EWTN’s voter guide for Catholics, “If a political candidate supported abortion, or any other moral evil, such as assisted suicide and euthanasia, for that matter, it would not be morally permissible for you to vote for that person.”2 Anything that rises to the level of mortal sin becomes a disqualifying issue. To quote further as a description of what constitutes an issue of such importance, “It is an issue that strikes at the heart of the human person and is non-negotiable. A disqualifying issue is one of such enormity that by itself renders a candidate for office unacceptable regardless of his position on other matters.”3

This brings us to the final major candidate, Donald Trump. We’ve heard much about his horrifyingly immoral character, especially lately, but is this a disqualifying issue? His comments, whether an admission of sexual assault, or just “locker room talk”, certainly objectify women. What I mean here is, in the modern context, his statements speak of these women as objects, rather than respecting them as persons. It is what we call today objectification, what Kant would call treating a person as a means rather than an end, and the perennial Christian tradition would call the deadly sin of Lust. Certainly this is objectively grave matter, sufficient to constitute mortal sin if done willingly and knowingly. However, as terrible as Trump’s behavior is and has been, it is not behavior which he qua president would be committing in our name – it is not his public policy. In fact, we would not even be enabling his bad behavior, since he very clearly is capable of committing these mortal sins without the office of the Presidency. So, in order to determine whether Trump is an even acceptable candidate, we must turn to his policy proposals.

While his pro-life credentials are dubious at best, we can really only go off of what he has said in his campaign, unless we have strong reason to believe otherwise. So I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here. Even despite that, Trump has pledged his support for other methods of murder which no Catholic, nor any good person can support. Specifically, Trump has suggested waging several unjust wars. The most grievous example was his suggestion to “take out [terrorists’] families” as a way of waging war against ISIS. Anyone with even a cursory familiarity with Just War Theory, or even just a moderately well-formed conscience, will know that the indiscriminate targeting of civilians in war not only makes such an act of war unjust by constituting unjust and disproportionate means, but elevates it to what we would today call a war crime.4

With all this being said, however, many have interpreted Catholicism in a way which allows one to vote for a candidate who would do the least harm as a way of preventing greater harm from occurring. This is an extrapolation from St. John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae, in which he says the following:

“When it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.”5

We Christians are told not to commit evil that good may come.6 This means that we cannot accept consequentialist ethical arguments under any circumstances, including the “lesser of two [or more] evils” method of voting. Even as an attempt to limit a worse evil, if we were to vote for a candidate who supports a mortal sin, we materially support that evil, and so commit that very evil ourselves. Such a support for evil constitutes an action which is malum in se, a grave matter which can constitute mortal sin. The Principle of Double-Effect cannot apply here either, since voting for a candidate who has pledged to do objectively grave evil, as opposed to merely being likely to do some harm, constitutes an intrinsic evil, rather than merely a morally neutral action with both good and bad consequences. Thus voting in an election such as this is not only a mortal sin and thus impermissible for a Catholic, but gravely immoral for anyone. So for everyone’s sake, but especially for the sake of your soul, don’t vote for a president this election season.7

Author’s Postscript:

As mentioned, there is some controversy surrounding the application of the principle of double effect to this kind of scenario, specifically if you can cast a vote “against” a worse candidate only by voting “for” a bad candidate, does it still count as materially supporting the bad candidate’s gravely sinful policies? I would argue that it does, but there are competent thinkers on either side of this latter issue, and it has not been resolved by the Magisterium. The debate comes down to whether a vote for an evil candidate constitutes an intrinsically evil act, which further comes down to the question of whether there is an action as such called “voting”, of which the object in a particular case is a particular candidate, or whether the act of voting intrinsically involves support for the candidate you’re voting for. If the former, the voting itself is morally neutral, and the principle of double effect can apply, since the action has both good and bad consequences (i.e. the person you’re voting for is the bad consequence, the person you’re voting against is the good consequence). If the latter, the action itself (voting) is an act of support for an evil candidate, and so constitutes an intrinsically evil act, with the positive effect of voting against the other worse candidate, and so constitutes doing evil so good may come. In summary, it comes down to whether the person you’re voting for is the object of a general action, or intrinsic to the specific action. I tend to think the latter, though I don’t have as robust an argument for distinguishing these things as I’d like.

They would be right, in my opinion, but that is not the point of this article. Moral arguments against voting as such can be found elsewhere, such as this article from the Mises Institute. ↩

Of course, the other qualifying factors which allow for a war to be just are not met in the case of a war with ISIS either, since there is also little chance of success against a guerrilla foe who utilizes defeats to recruit and radicalize followers, as well as being far from a last resort. ↩

Perhaps one could vote for a smaller-party candidate, or a suitable write-in, but such an action is really a waste of time, unless one is already going to be at the polling place for other down-ballot issues. In such a case, voting for a lesser candidate would be morally permissible, but one should not place one’s hope in such an action. ↩

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Vincent Andrew Drausinus McCoige is a Roman Catholic, and a graduate student in philosophy at the University of South Florida, specializing in medieval Christian philosophy, especially ethics and moral psychology, who holds to a voluntaryist political theory, understanding the state to be inherently immoral, as well as obsolete in the modern digital world.

3 comments

So it is a mortal sin to not use violence against those defending their property rights, including their rights over their own bodies? If that’s the case, I don’t see how Catholicism is at all compatible with libertarianism.

The best option is to “write in” a vote for a person of your choice. If they each only get 10% each of the total vote, and 80% of the population “writes in” a choice, they loose the “mandate” of the total percentage of the vote. They then cannot be elected by the electoral college. If you just “don’t vote” as this article suggests, then one of these 2 jokers will get a “mandate”, meaning a high enough percentage of the vote to claim “legitimacy”, and then they will be ‘elected” by the electoral college. If enough people write in a candidate, they will not have a high enough percentage of the total vote to be elected by the “college”, and it will go to congress to be decided, and you will start to break the 2 party stranglehold you have allowed to continue by listening to people like this author who wants you to just give up and stay home. A ‘non vote’ is just as problematic as voting for either of them.

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